The great 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell said, “It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law, and yet have a mystery to move about in.”
Science
Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Unsplash
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
The world of science
Let’s talk about the topic that will define the 21st century. Let’s talk about globalization.
Photo by Glsun Mall on Unsplash
Good evidence makes science we can live with
Critics often complain that science is a closed shop, blindly committed to defending established “dogmas,” and unwilling to entertain ideas that fall outside accepted paradigms. Scientists will circle the wagons around accepted theories like evolution by natural selection, say the critics, and dismiss out-of-hand unorthodox ideas like creationism or homeopathy.
“The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople” by Eugène Delacroix (1840)
When religion subverts science
Question: Who said, “Whenever [one] hears [our] religion abused, he should not attempt to defend its tenets, except with his sword, and that he should thrust into the scoundrel’s belly, as far as it will enter”?
Photo by Julian Wirth on Unsplash
The gray areas save the world
Let me speak for gray.
Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash
Two different paths to enlightenment
The writer and conservationist Wendell Berry is just the latest in a long line of critics who accuse science of being a religion.
Photo by Cross Duck (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
A poet’s kiss touches science
“The way bees on a drowsy day suck honey from fuchsia.” At least once each year I fly back and forth to Ireland on Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline. These words are woven into the fabric that covers the airplane seats, with other brief excerpts from Irish writers.
Photo by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash
Science fits nicely between art, reality
“There’s nothing creative about science,” someone recently said to me. “The world’s out there and science tries to know it. Scientists create nothing; they merely describe.”
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash
Fact filtering in the pursuit of truth
Last week this column took note of two explanations for the fossils known as ammonites. These animals in stone look like serpents curled upon themselves, or the tightly coiled horns of miniature rams.
Samuel Pepys, from a portrait by John Hayls (Public Domain)
A Brit bureaucrat enthralled with science
I don’t know if high school kids today read Samuel Pepys’ Diary. Back in the 50s even parochial school students were exposed to bits of the diary — mostly Pepys’ accounts of the Great London Fire of 1666 and the plague.